“A&I” (Abstracting & Indexing) Keeps Coming Up

Not many of the players in this room would still call themselves “abstracting and indexing services”–at least not in front of their markets–but that didn’t stop today’s speakers from talking about “A&I” as if it was still a pertinent topic.

Outsell’s Leigh Watson Healy noted that librarians value information services based on the quality of their A&I layer to a much higher degree than end-users value that service aspect.

EPA’s Richard Huffine, speaking on this last panel, put it this way, “A&I adds value, but it may be something end-users don’t need to understand (or shouldn’t need to understand) in order to use a service.”